The Crooner
By Raymond Luczak
Oh how that damn song still plays, and though I cannot hold a note, its melody stings loneliness. It is missing me how the moon aches for the comforting quilt of night when it disappears from the sky, and I do not know how to reclaim the song I used to sing. My voice has turned hoarse from trying to love so hard. I need to sit down on the bleachers and wait for no one in this gymnasium makeshift into a concert with staticky loudspeakers. Many singers are surely far better than I. Perhaps I am only a one-hit wonder after all. Yet my veins keep pumping hope oh of mad hope each time I wonder about each handsome man, neatly coiffed and suited up, glancing my way. Will he linger long enough to croon me a tune from the American Songbook and ask me to duet with him on his next song? Oh how I straighten my tuxedo jacket, tuck in my cummerbund, and give a tight smile when the audience applauds the next singer bounding onstage. Maybe he will notice me staring at him with the prettiest stars he’s ever seen and foresee inside me the universe with all its supernovae exploding inside him.
Raymond Luczak (he/him) is the author and editor of 25 titles, including Compassion, Michigan: The Ironwood Stories (Modern History Press) and once upon a twin: poems (Gallaudet University Press). His work has appeared in POETRY, Passages North, and elsewhere. An inaugural Zoeglossia Fellow, he lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.